Ftwelder, thanks for your kind words. I'm amazed I have the bike. And I'm sorry I don't have a few more original parts and/or more period appropriate components. Of course, the stuff I added in 1975 is a lot closer now to 1962 than 2012.

Keeping a bike that long - well, there's no rational reason for it, except to say I probably picked up the trait of keeping "stuff" from my mom, who lived through the Depression. I'm glad I still have that old bike, though.

When I ride or even think about my Follis, I can connect with my past half-century of personal history. I think about my wonderful Uncle Sid, who gave me the bike and paid, I believe, $145 for it. My uncle was a legendary hotel owner in Las Vegas, and later gave me my first car, my second and third cars, too (and all of them new)! I might have been better off if he'd stopped with the bike, but he didn't and I remember my uncle and how good he was to me, every time I ride that bike.

I can remember that bike turned me loose to explore Los Angeles on my own terms. It gave me the desire to climb the steepest hills I could find in the Santa Monica Mountains, where I lived, when I was in middle and high school (solo riding, no one else I knew wanted to torture themselves that way). I remember taking that bike with me to college in Northern California, pedaling to class, and the wonderful rides I made around and up into the Cascades with my friends. I remember riding over to the apartment of the girl I was in love with. And I remember bringing that bike back to Los Angeles with me.

With no little sadness, I recall how much I abused that bike, leaving it out in the rain when I was in college, not keeping it clean, letting it rust and go out of adjustment. And I remember how I tried to make up for it, having the bike repainted (but losing the chromed forks and chain stays in the process, which perhaps I'll rectify this decade or the next), purchasing the new components to go along with the paint job, and keeping the bike reasonably clean and under a roof for what is now 37 years.

It's been a wonderful relationship, a link to who I was and who I am, now. I've purchased several other bikes over the years. None, though, mean as much to me as my Follis.